8/10/2010 @ 2:30PM

Summer 2010's Box Office Winners

If there’s one thing studios know, it’s that you can’t go wrong releasing children’s movies in the summertime. Under-scheduled kids and hassled parents are always happy to hit the theater for a few hours of air-conditioned distraction. And if the movie is good enough, kids will go see it twice.

That’s likely what happened with
Disney
release Toy Story 3. The animated feature is the summer’s top earner at the box office, taking in $895 million worldwide as of Monday. Sure, it’s in 3-D, which often means as much as $5 more per ticket. But the movie also got rave reviews, earning a rating of 92 out of 100 on Metacritic, which translates into almost universal acclaim. Toy Story 3 has now earned more than the first two movies in the series combined.

Our ranking of this summer’s box office winners is based on Box Office Mojo’s data on U.S. film box office receipts; we added in international box office returns to come up with the final list. Why are we taking stock now? There may be a few weeks left of summer, but blockbuster season is over–studios generally drop their biggest films by the end of July. The only recent release with potential to crack our list of the summer’s top 10 is Salt. The film opened two weeks ago and has so far earned $155 million at the box office worldwide.

In second place is Shrek Forever After from
DreamWorks Animation
. With $663 million in earnings globally, the final Shrek film is $232 million behind Toy Story 3. It’s the worst performing of the four Shrek films in the U.S., but it gets a boost from the overseas box office, which represents 64% of the film’s earnings.

In third and fourth place are films aimed at older kids: Eclipse and Iron Man 2.

Expectations were high for the Summit Entertainment release Eclipse. It took in a respectable $650 million, but it failed to out-earn its predecessor in the Twilight series, New Moon, which brought in $710 million at the box office last fall. Summit has set the release dates for the next two films for November of 2011 and November 2012.

Iron Man 2 took in $622 million, putting the film $37 million over the first Iron Man‘s earnings. Execs at
Viacom
studio Paramount are hoping Iron Man 2‘s strong performance bodes well for a slew of other Marvel superhero movies it has lined up for the next few years, including The Avengers in 2012, which will feature Iron Man alongside the likes of Captain America and The Incredible Hulk.

Other kid-friendly films that make our list: The Karate Kid, ranking ninth with $268 million, and Despicable Me, in 10th with $253 million.

Inception ranks fifth with $478 million so far (the film hit theaters July 16). The $160 million movie was a big gamble for
Time Warner
studio Warner Bros. It’s not based on a book, a TV show or an older movie, and the plot is twisty enough to cause confusion and headaches for many viewers. But somehow the original work has turned into a bona fide hit. Director Christopher Nolan’s last film, The Dark Knight, earned a whopping $1 billion at the box office. Inception is nowhere near that, but it has well surpassed Nolan’s last non-Batman film, The Prestige, which earned only $110 million at the global box office.